Desperately seeking botox for my asparagus

Last year I went a bit asparagus-crazy and I froze 20 large ziplock bags of asparagus. We just finished the last bag a couple of weeks ago, and while it was delicious, they really softened up in the freezer and this year I wanted to do something about the texture.

I found a fantastic recipe for pickled asparagus in Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved. The picture in the book showed amazingly plump spears that just begged to be snapped in half. I was sold. So when I found the first spring crop of asparagus at the farmers' market, I went a bit nuts and bought 10 bunches for $15, a STEAL, and went home clucking with contentment.

Of course, things went less smoothly from that point. The first step in the recipe was to cut the asparagus so that the pieces didn't extend past the threads of the pint jars. Hmmm. Well, I had bought long bunches of thin spears, and my 2.5 lbs of asparagus quickly became 1 lb of asparagus. No problem, I would just use the discarded ends for soup.

My next problem: no dill seed. I have approximately 3,000 different vials of spices in my house, yet somehow none of them were dill. So back to the grocery store to buy dill seed, but this brief foray improbably ended with me purchasing a $500 air conditioning unit at Canadian Tire. Go figure.

So it's two hours later and I'm ready to continue with the recipe. As directed, I lightly blanch the asparagus and then chill it, while I work on the hot vinegar pickling mix. I must confess the pickling mix smelled divine, very simple but somehow sophisticated, with coriander and cumin seeds vying with the dill.

I then pack my pint jars with the asparagus and cover with vinegar. Into the hot water bath for 10 minutes of hard boiling, and then out to cool. The book told me to leave the jars undisturbed for 5 hours.

When I returned to the jars, THIS is what I found: what had previously been asparagus now looked like asparagus jerky, the moisture pulled completely out of the stalks and now wizened with more creases than Larry King's forehead. And it looks like Hurricane Katrina went through the jar.

Oh, and I didn't mention the yield: TWO PINTS. An hour of work for two pints of asparagus. So not including my time, the cost per jar worked out to something like $10. Not exactly meeting my bargain requirement.

And if you include the goddamn air conditioner, it's more like $260 per jar. For mummified asparagus. Let's hope it tastes better than it looks.

YIELD VERDICT: FAIL
APPEARANCE VERDICT: NASTY

As an aside, the soup I made with the cast off bits was AMAZING!